Man accused of molesting girl asks to leave his trial

Former North Port bank manager is charged with taking photographs of himself abusing a 2-year-old.

By SHANNON McFARLAND

A former North Port banker, accused of taking and sending explicit photos of himself molesting a 2-year-old girl still in diapers, made a rare request to be absent from his own trial Tuesday morning.

Anthony Hanifan, 38, had no criminal record when he was arrested in October 2011 after being linked to a Massachusetts child pornography investigation. At the time, the college-educated man was working at Wells Fargo and married with a child of his own, while prosecutors say that he was sending explicit photos and video he took with his iPhone from a secret email account at his North Port home.

“There was something very dark going on in that house,” Assistant State Attorney Andrea McHugh said during her opening statements Tuesday morning.

A jury was selected Monday for the week-long trial, with Hanifan pleading not guilty to 11 charges, including sexual assault of a child, molesting a child, cruelty toward a child and transmitting child pornography. If convicted, he could face up to three life sentences with an additional 70 years.

Hanifan's appointed defense attorney, John Scotese, leveled a general challenge against the prosecutor's case. Telling the jury “the evidence is not sufficient to sustain a conviction,” Scotese reminded jurors in his opening statement that prosecutors must prove each of the 11 counts “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Despite the serious charges against him, Hanifan asked Judge Donna Berlin to excuse himself from the courtroom during the testimony and evidence presented against him, waiving his constitutional right to hear the case made against him. Berlin granted the request, allowing Hanifan to wait in a courthouse holding area and informing him about the progress of the trial after the jury left the courtroom.

During the trial, the Massachusetts man who allegedly met Hanifan online was brought in to testify. Jason Clark, 31, of Leicester, Mass., saved a 941 area code phone number in his phone only as “Florida 3Y,” for the girl about 3 years old that he had seen in several explicit photos sent to him. The number reportedly belonged to Hanifan, who was then a caretaker for a 2-year-old.

“He said he used to do it more when she was younger, but didn't want her to remember now that she was getting older,” Clark said. Clark testified that he corresponded with “Florida 3Y” by email, text and phone conversation.

Wearing a suit and tie in court, Clark is under federal custody with an 8-count indictment against him for allegedly molesting a 6-year-old he was babysitting, recording the sexual abuse and trading child pornography online. His testimony is part of a pending plea deal, which if approved by a judge, could leave him with 15 to 30 years in prison, instead of a life sentence. When investigators arrested him, they discovered he had three phones and at least 40 pornographic photos of children.

Even then, Clark told the jury the photos from “Florida 3Y” were tough to see. He deleted them from his phone.

“The girl involved was extremely young and the pictures were more sexual in nature than I was used to,” Clark said, answering an attorney's questions about why he told investigators about the Florida child in the deleted photos. Investigators had questioned him about what he remembered, then passed his descriptions and other information to North Port Police.

Two days later, North Port detectives tracked down Hanifan.

Officers arrived at his home, where Hanifan reportedly drove off and ran two stop signs before officers stopped him. They immediately confiscated his iPhone, which reportedly had access to the secret email account and four explicit photos of himself with a child.

The same day, detectives contacted the child's mother at work, while her toddler was at daycare. The mother, who is not being identified to protect her child's identity, was pulled into an office with several officers. During the 30-minute interview, she was nervous and scared, she told the jury.

She had known Hanifan since 2004. Speaking in short answers, the mother testified that he always had his black-cased iPhone “within arm's” reach.

She and her child have not seen Hanifan since his arrest two years ago.

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